Twenty minutes later we rolled in through the open gates of Mr Purdy’s villa, which stands on the hill-slopes to the north of the city, in the centre of an extensive wailed estate. Not only the gates but also the front door stood open, and lights were burning in the hall-quite as if a reception had been planned. While we waited for someone to answer our ring, I remarked on the absence of the huge wolfhound which Purdy keeps chained up at the front of the villa, and whose boisterous welcome is normally such a feature of visits to the house.
Despite the apparent air of welcome, we had to ring three times before Sergio, the handsome lout whom Purdy for some reason insists on employing as his factotum, appeared.
‘You are the doctor?’ he bawled, looking at Browning.
Before either of us had a chance to reply-or even to consider what we should reply-a carriage drew up outside, and a soberly-dressed gentleman descended. He, it appeared, was the doctor-and was instantly led away into the innermost regions of the villa by Sergio, whose only response to our enquiries was to repeat that Signor Purdy was ill and could not see anyone.
This news, of course, merely whetted our curiosity, and we therefore settled down to await further developments. These were not long in coming, for the doctor very shortly returned, with Sergio bustling along self-importantly at his heels. We introduced ourselves, and enquired whether we could be of any assistance. The doctor, who proved to be Swiss, shook his head.
‘Everything possible has been done,’ he replied gravely. ‘Mr Purdy has been savaged by that hound he keeps, and I am afraid that he may be most seriously ill.’
More lamps were fetched, and the four of us went to the spot where the attack had taken place. Here we found the body of the dog stretched on the gravel. The medical man carefully directed Sergio and one of the gardeners in the task of wrapping the cadaver in sacking and loading it to his carriage, and he then drove off to examine the beast at his surgery-the implications of this, and of his earlier words, were of course only too evident.
Once the doctor had gone we cornered Sergio and got him to tell us exactly what had happened. I say ‘exactly’, but in truth the fellow seems to combine the worst of both sexes, being as skittish as a woman and as dull as any peasant-Heaven knows what Purdy sees in him. In the end, however, we managed painfully to cull the following information from the confused and lurid account he provided.
At two o’clock that day, as on every Monday of the year, Purdy had summoned his carriage and had himself driven into Florence to attend the weekly reunion of the Lucullean Club-a select society whose meetings are entirely given over to the consumption of a meal of gargantuan proportions, conversation of any kind being strictly forbidden except between courses, and then only to comment on the fare.
When the gourmets had concluded their deliberations, Sergio drove his master home. On their arrival Purdy got out of the carriage and went over to fondle the wolfhound, as was his invariable habit. The next instant Sergio heard the most terrible scream, together with the muffled barks and growls of a dog and a succession of obscene tearing sounds. Running to see what had happened, he found his master lying motionless on the ground with an enormous black brute of a dog towering over him, its muzzle dripping foam!
The beast immediately tried to attack Sergio as well, but he was just beyond its reach, chained as it was to the wall. He ran into the house and roused one of the gardeners, who brought a gun and-Sergio having decoyed the creature away from Mr Purdy-shot it dead. The master of the house, who had meanwhile fainted, had then been carried inside and put to bed, and the doctor sent for.
‘There is one thing I should like to verify before we leave,’ Browning remarked, once Sergio had left us to answer a summons from the house. The scene of the tragedy was still brightly illuminated: there was the gravel scuffed up for yards around, and the gun still lying on the ground beside a great pool of blood. But Browning ignored these, directing his attention instead to the chain to which the animal had been attached-or rather to a piece of cheap hemp cord tied to it.
‘Does this not strike you as rather curious-and suggestive?’ he asked me. But I hardly heard him, my attention having been attracted to something written in fresh white chalk on the dull-red painted plaster wall. It read:
‘What do you make of that?’ I asked my companion.
He shook his head.
‘The word is presumably Italian, but it is not one with which I am familiar.’
At this moment Sergio emerged from the house with the welcome news that Maurice Purdy wished to speak to us.
We found the tubby little epicure in his bedchamber on the second floor of the house-a pale flabby figure cowering in the depths of an enormous featherbed, his features covered in livid scratches. He was in a shocking state of nervous excitement. It seemed that the doctor had administered a sedative, but that this had not yet taken effect; meanwhile Purdy had learned from Sergio of our presence, and had summoned us to commiserate with him on the injustice-such was the theme on which he harped-of what had occurred.
‘Why me?’ he wailed. ‘I who have never hurt a fly in my life! Why should Luath do such a thing! I have always given him the best of everything! Why should this happen to me? All I have ever asked is to be let alone to enjoy my innocent pleasures. It isn’t fair! What have I done to deserve this? I do declare that it simply is not fair!’
It was a truly affecting scene-the man was almost in tears. Browning and I naturally expressed our horror and sympathy, and in due course I touched on the letter: it was at once clear that Purdy had no idea what I was talking about-he had written me no such letter, nor had he summoned me or anyone else to the villa that evening.
By now the effects of the sedative were beginning to become apparent, and we prepared to take our leave.
At the door Browning suddenly turned.
‘Does your dog wear a collar, Mr Purdy?’
‘Indeed he does!’ Purdy answered in a singsong voice, as though in a trance-with no apparent awareness of the singularity of the query. The most beautiful thing, all of local leatherwork, with his name worked in bronze.’
‘And this collar is of course attached directly to his chain?’
‘Directly, directly! The clasp was made specially for me … very good man … give you his name … tomorrow … luncheon
We slipped silently out of the room. Outside we found Sergio lounging insolently against the wall.
‘Ciacco!’ called Browning.
Sergio eyes blazed with anger.
‘Who are you calling “ciacco”?’ he demanded indignantly.
‘I said Giacomo-that is your name, isn’t it?’
‘I’m Sergio!’
‘My apologies. Why, what does it mean, ciacco? Something bad, I’ll warrant.’
‘It means a pig.’
The long drive back from Purdy’s villa to the safety of the city walls seemed still longer because of the stony silence which my companion maintained throughout. I could see that he was both fascinated and terrified by these dramatic new developments: terrified of the magnitude and gravity of this affair he had so lightly got himself involved with, and could not now get out of, but also fascinated-as it were despite himself!
When we reached the city we parted without ceremony, merely agreeing to meet the following afternoon.
‘What is happening?’ Browning cried suddenly, at the last moment. ‘What is this terrible curse which has descended on our little community? A paradise of exiles, Shelley called Italy — is it instead to become an inferno?’
I did not know what to say, for my only thought was of the irony of the situation. My most earnest wish had been granted: I had formed a relationship with a man I believed to be truly great-and we must apparently spend our whole energies discussing these gory and depressing crimes. It is so maddening! Imagine being magically transported back to Shakespeare’s times-only to discover that you are his lawyer, and he will talk to you of nothing but land values. What of Art? What of Spirit? What of the great ideals that can make human life seem worth the living? It is on them that I would fain dwell with a soul such as Browning’s-instead of which we seem condemned to spend our time contemplating the legs of garden tables, bits of mouldy rope, lamps and pen-knives, and the precise design of dog collars!
And the worst of it is that Browning appears positively to revel in it! It seems that he is in some sense attracted by crime, by diseased and abnormal behaviour of every type, and in the greater detail the better! Indeed, I am very much afraid that there is a danger of his undoubted poetic gifts suffering as a result. In the volume I purchased, for example, I have noticed-despite my enduring enthusiasm for the collection in its entirety-several pieces which display an unseemly fascination with the workings of evil and deranged minds. The one entitled ‘My Last Duchess’ is a particularly repulsive example of the tendency to which I allude.
There is of course much very fine work in the volume-stirring tales of romance and chivalry, touching lyrics, quaint historical scenes and so on. But there is also this other strain — morbid, dark, introspective, unhealthy-which disturbs me; and what disturbs me still more is that it appears to be of relatively recent origin. Sordello, the early work he has given me, appears to be completely free of it. Is this some cancer which threatens to consume his genius? I have no way of answering this question as yet, but I am very apprehensive. Of course a great soul must be able to understand evil and madness-but at a distance, so to speak, without itself being contaminated. Whereas Browning seems to roll in the nastiness he handles, like a pig in mud.
We had arranged to meet at a coffee-shop near the Cathedral after dinner-Browning always leaves Casa Guidi for a walk at this hour, and could thus meet me without any risk of arousing suspicion.
He had already been to visit the doctor who was attending Purdy, and the news was grave indeed, for the dog which had made such a meal of the poor bon vivant had proved to be infected with rabies!
Thus poor Purdy’s death certificate is in effect already signed, lacking only the date. At some time within the next month or so the hideous symptoms will begin to manifest themselves: the unpredictable shifts from savage excitement to apathetic stupor, culminating in the final death agony lasting for days, in which the throat muscles seize up completely and the sufferer, tormented by extreme hunger and thirst, tries in vain to swallow, unable to bear the sight of food or drink. When I thought of the manner in which Maurice Purdy had lived, this terrible fate put me in mind of some moralistic painting of the Middle Ages. I said as much to Browning, who nodded gravely.
‘Indeed. But I fear that something more than just pure coincidence is involved. I inspected the cadaver of the dog which attacked Mr Purdy at the doctor’s just now. That beast was no wolfhound-although he had some wolf blood in him, I shouldn’t wonder. As for that piece of rope we saw attached to the chain at the villa, the rest of it was still tied roughly round the animal’s neck.
The implication is only too clear. Maurice Purdy has been-or rather is going to be-the victim of a fiendishly cunning murder; a murder which has not yet occurred, but which cannot be prevented. His dog was removed-and no doubt killed-and a rabid animal substituted. In the dark Purdy did not notice the difference until it was too late.’
‘And what about the writing on the villa wall? The word “pig”-is that some comment on Purdy’s gulosity?’
‘Taken in conjunction with the manner in which the victim will die, I think there can be not the slightest doubt of that. It appears to be a classic case of poetic justice, of the punishment fitting the crime. But what disturbs me is the fact that the writing was in Florentine dialect-the word was “ciacco,” not “porco”.’
‘Are we then dealing with a Florentine murderer? A native? Perhaps some vendetta against the foreign community is intended.’
‘Perhaps. But do not forget the letter you received last night. That was certainly not written by an Italian, and yet it obliquely foretold the tragedy at Purdy’s villa, brought us out to witness its effects, and-most strikingly-linked it to the deaths of Mrs Eakin and DeVere. Now if the attack on Purdy was, as I have suggested, a cold-blooded murder, then it brings the number of such crimes to three; and the number three, you will recall, accompanied the word scrawled at the scene of that attack. In short, a pattern begins to emerge-a pattern which I suspect we may equate with that “more ambitious criminal project whose full scope and extent is only beginning to become apparent” mentioned in the letter.’
I suggested that the simplest way of verifying this hypothesis would be to inspect the scenes of the other two crimes which had occurred, and see whether some sort of inscription was not also to be found there-and as it transpired that this was precisely what was in Browning’s mind, we set off without more ado.